One day earlier this year, Matt Lajoie drove two hours south from his home in Brunswick, Maine, to friend, and fellow musician Doug Tuttle's apartment in Somerville Massachusetts. The two had plans to make a guitar record. There was little talk of direction, just that it had to be 100% improvised, and that the recording would feature one guitar in each speaker.The result was Lajoie/Tuttle-American Primate, a play on American Primitive, a guitar-based genre originated by John Fahey in the late 1950s and early 1960s, that mixed neo-classical compositions with traditional country blues fingerpicking techniques.
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The initial idea had come the previous winter when Tuttle was out on the road with Lavoie's band Herbcraft. "After watching each other play night after night we started talking about the possibility of making an electric guitar duo record, a few months later we had settled on a time and place," explains Tuttle. "Upon Matt's arrival we got to work setting up in my work room, each amp facing a wall with just enough space for a microphone to be pointed at the speaker.Over the course of the next three hours the two recorded eight improvised jams that were later trimmed down to form the material on a cassette that is coming out on Burger Records on Oct 9.Take a listen to the track "Revolution Rag" below.
'Lajoie/Tuttle-American Primate' is available Oct 9 on Burger Records.